Monday, January 16, 2017

Have an IPA with your IPA

When one (me) thinks of IPA, it is India Pale Ale. San Diego County is a national leader in the micro brew industry and I'm proud of our West Coast IPA's. So, the other day, while drinking a couple of IPA's, I came up with this blog title as MK and I were playing with our new Christmas present to ourselves. This would be our Intelligent Personal Assistant (IPA), otherwise known as the Amazon Echo with the personal aka, "Alexa."

The other night we had our friend, Mark Hunter over for dinner and after a few IPA's (the beer kind), we showed him our current favorite game of, "Alexa, play Seinfeld Trivia." We also jumped into asking Alexa about music. Mark is currently learning the 1965 song (with his band The Waits), You Were On My Mind, by the We Five. So, Mark asked, "Alexa, play You Were On My Mind by We Five." The song comes on and smiles all around.

So I realize as I'm writing this it's probably going to sound like a free advertisement for Amazon; something they really don't need as the Amazon Echo did quite well and in fact sold out during the holiday season. Anyway, we are having a blast with this IPA as the market continues to grow with these products and is probably the little canary before we get an IPA robot someday off in the future. I can't wait to get "James the Butler" for Christmas in 2020 something.

For music, we also dressed up Alexa a bit by purchasing Amazon Music Unlimited for $79.00 a year if you are an Amazon Prime member. At first, I balked at the price, but after purchasing, it was a smart move for us because now we have unlimited streaming music on several devices: our computers, phones with Bluetooth in the car and of course, Alexa. For the car, I downloaded the Amazon Music Unlimited app for my smartphone and can choose between my extensive Offline music collection on my phone and not eat into my data minutes, or stream any Online Playlist I want to. For the Echo (and I recommend the sound of the Echo vs the smaller Amazon Dot), Alexa is strategically placed on a table that is located by the bottom of our stairs. This is almost the center of our up and downstairs house, where Alexa is in earshot from almost any location in the house. While writing this on my computer upstairs, I asked "Alexa, play We Five," and she responded by giving me a mix of their music, until you simply say, "Alexa, pause or Alexa stop."

Anyway, I hope to tap into a lot of old and new music this year drinking IPA's and using the Echo which may lead to some random Monday Monday Music blog. I leave you with my We Five Playlist.